Ethnotheatre and the performative interview as a multimodal methodology of world-making: a case study on young confinement immobility

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ethnotheatre is an art-based methodology and a critical and world-making practice through reflexive affect endeavour. It joins a group of people to participate in a theatre production about their symbolic and material world. We will debate the effects of this methodology on making ethnography the punctum of socially engaged performance projects. How can we research combining ethnography’s gesture with artistic methodologies to learn common sociocultural riddles or quandaries of marginal and hopefully transitory people? Ethnotheatre effectively elicits the vernacular metacommunicative repertoire veiled in inmates’ hidden transcripts. We explore the framing and potentials of the performative interview in a case study of immobile confinement. Combining ethnographic gesture with artistic world-making practice, we better apprehend and understand the symbolic sites where people may speak out. The world emerges when you make someone heard. We will discuss this methodological tool with a case study about confinement immobility, applying ethnotheatre to understand better how inmates live and resist in their prison’s “invisible” ruled world.